


but we're the greatest - they'll hang us in the louvre

by blushandbooks



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: Drabble Collection, F/M, Fluff, Love Confessions, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-17 05:16:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 17,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28968912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blushandbooks/pseuds/blushandbooks
Summary: anthology of juke drabbles based off of four-word requests.{title from the louvre by lorde}
Relationships: Julie Molina/Luke Patterson
Comments: 61
Kudos: 182





	1. 1

**Author's Note:**

> this was a lil celebration of 1.5k followers on tumblr, so i had people send me a ton of drabble requests!!!! all are juke, and its just fun times.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> request: canonverse, pining, confession, luke's flannel

It was a little message left for whenever Julie needed it. Sometimes Luke was there, but sometimes he wasn’t -- and it would just show up. 

She had always noticed that Luke put it on when he was in an emotional state and needed to feel like he was receiving a constant hug from somebody. But whenever he would offer it up to her, it felt like he was handing her another chip of his heart and hoping that she would use it to fill her own gaps. 

The pattern started after Julie went out with Flynn to the beach and found herself shivering as the two of them ran along the coastline.

Julie told the guys she was going out, but they all seemed to be keeping themselves occupied and weren’t planning to join; but then, Luke poofed at her side, took note of the goosebumps along her skin, and immediately shrugged off the orange and grey fabric to drape it around her shoulders. 

“You forgot your jacket,” he murmurs, breath brushing along her forehead as he straightens the collar. “Can’t let you freeze.”

“How did you know I didn’t have my jacket?”

“Because when I went up to your room to drop off your backpack, it was laying on your bed.” 

The flannel, now filled out with her arms through the sleeves, smells impossibly like Luke. Sweet but musky and a little like the garage, which she supposes is what makes it smell like home. He’s still standing in front of her with his fingers lightly curled around the collar, and Flynn is staring at them curiously -- she can only see Julie gazing up at air -- and Julie can’t help but lean forward. “Do you… wanna stick around? Hang out for a bit?”

His eyes widen, surprised; and Julie wonders how it could ever still shock him that she wants him around. 

“No. No, I’m good. It’s your day with Flynn.” He shakes his head and pulls away from her, allowing the billowing chill in the air to surround her. “I’ll see you at home.”

And then he was gone. 

The flannel lost some of its scent after that trip, so Julie was sure to return it and urge Luke to wear it at any given opportunity so that it would regain it’s smell. 

He continues to pawn the shirt off to her in various circumstances: She’s wearing a cropped grey shirt and black jeans to school one day, and Luke throws it at her and tells her it would look good. When she is leaving a venue one night and waiting for her dad to bring the car around, and she shivers from the chilly nighttime air, Luke is quick to swoop in with the flannel and a featherlight kiss on her shoulder. 

Julie finds that the flannel is in her possession more than Luke’s, and she cannot decipher why for the life of her. It wasn’t like the giving action didn’t make her heart dangerously falter in her chest -- it definitely did, and got worse with each instance -- but he seemed so determined to give it to her. 

And she just wanted him to have it, so that it would smell like him whenever she wore it. 

He even started dropping it off when she wasn’t aware, leaving it in her spaces before she even knew she needed it. 

It would be in the backseat of her dad’s car after school when he knew she had a stressful math test that day, or in her room the morning of her mother’s birthday, or on top of her when she falls asleep on the couch in the garage. 

“Why do you always give me your flannel?”

It’s a songwriting Saturday for the two of them, and the shirt in question is coincidentally wrapped around her body as they huddle together over three journals and countless sheets of paper. 

“What do you mean?”

They both find themselves shutting their journals in their laps before the conversation gets off the ground floor -- they both sense something bigger coming. 

“I don’t know… I just… It feels like you’re always giving me this shirt. I’m starting to think you don’t want it anymore or something,” Julie chuckles, trying to lighten the tense air. But Luke’s pupils dilate and something deeper is going on. 

“I…“ He trails off. “Do you not want me to give it to you?”

“No! That’s not it, of course I like it, it just- It happens a lot.”

Preciously, his eyebrows knit together. “I like giving you my shirt.”

But it doesn’t even smell like you anymore, Julie thinks to herself in between internal screams about a cute boy wanting to pawn his shirt off to her 24/7. But then Luke is smiling, and it hits Julie that she may have just vocalized this thought, and-

“You’re right,” Luke nods, shifting even closer to her even though they are already pressed together. “It smells like you.”

And just like that, Julie feels herself completely melting from the inside out. 

He wants her to have the shirt so that he has something that reminds him of her so he doesn’t have to awkwardly hang out in her room whenever she’s gone, but she loves the shirt most when it feels like she’s carrying him with her wherever she goes. 

Uncontrollably, she opens her mouth, letting out a question that is barely a whisper. “What do I smell like?”

Luke is suddenly leaning in towards her, and her eyes magnetically fall to his approaching lips from his eyes, and she takes a deep breath in preparation when he diverts from her lips to her cheek. 

With a soft kiss next to her ear, Luke inhales. “You smell like…” He trails down slowly and torturously, running his nose along the curve of her jaw and the crook of her neck. Her hands find his forearms and lightly wrap around them; eyes fluttering shut. “Mm, peaches. Your shampoo. And that perfume that you put on every morning.” 

Julie hums as more soft kisses are pressed against her skin, barely rendering her able to form coherent sentences. 

“You like peaches?”

“I like you. Peaches by association.”

It’s such a Luke thing to say; effortless and confident and too sweet for her heart to take. With a quiet chuckle, and Luke’s mouth still pressed into her skin like it is trying to tattoo its presence there, the next words break through Julie’s easy grin without hesitation.

“I like you, too.”


	2. 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> request: canonverse, pining, est. relationship, in the studio

At one point -- Luke doesn’t know when exactly it happened -- he stopped thinking of the couch in the studio as his. 

It was his couch since he ran away from home and slept on it for six months, it was his couch when Sunset Curve’s entire EP was written on that couch, it was his couch when Bobby gladly told him that he could take it when the band made enough money for the runaway to buy his own place. 

And then one day, he poofed into the garage after a day at the beach and Julie was on that same couch, curled up with her hair tied back and an oversized sweatshirt swallowing her body, and the couch wasn’t just  _ his _ anymore. 

It was where Luke and Julie wrote music. 

It was where Luke tried, and barely made it through, teaching her guitar. 

It was where Julie gave him a song that she wrote, for them. 

The couch wasn’t  _ his _ . It was  _ theirs.  _

This was monumental news to him, but he knew it probably wouldn’t be to anyone else. He didn’t wax poetic about it to the boys or proclaim it to Julie in any special way, because it was just a couch. 

One stupid, tattered piece of furniture that was a tiny symbol of their relationship compared to things like the microphone where she permanently inked a cupcake just for him. 

He didn’t even think she thought of it as his couch anymore anyways -- he said it once, within the first minute they had a full conversation, even though it had been hers for the last sixteen years of her life. There was no way that one moment had stayed with her. 

Until it did. 

“Okay, okay, no, you have to bring the couch!” Luke insisted as Julie giggled against his chest. They were laying on the couch in question with Julie between his legs and cuddled into his front as his arms were wrapped around her like she needed to be closer. Their debate was about what Julie’s apartment would look like when she was older -- similar to the one Luke had with Bobby 25 years ago. 

Julie’s laughing slowed as she perched her chin against his sternum to look up at him clearly. “You’re just saying that because it’s ‘your’ couch. You’re so possessive over this thing.”

And just like that, Luke was confused and shocked rolled into one brain that can barely handle one of those emotions, let alone both. 

“Because it’s ‘mine?’”

“Well, yeah?” His girlfriend is suddenly slipping from his grasp to sit up and stare down at him with the brown eyes that could keep him glued to his seat. “That’s what you said, wasn’t it?”

Luke follows in sitting up, trying to shift back closer to Julie because even when she’s out of reach for a minute, it’s too long. “Well yeah, but- Jules, that was a long time ago.”

He pulls her hands into his lap and plays with her fingers as if they are the strings of his guitar. 

“So?”

“So, it’s not my couch anymore.”

“What do you-”

“It stopped being mine a while ago. It’s ours. And yes, I am possessive over it, and that’s why.”

The soft hands in his tighten at his words. “‘Ours?’”

Lost Julie is not a very common Julie to spot. But here she is, in front of him, acting as if the news that everything in Luke’s afterlife ties back to her is novel information. When she’s like this, her lips form a barely visible pout and a little crease forms on her forehead. Even though Luke hates that Julie doesn’t understand that she is truly the center of his universe, just like the sun, Julie is precious when she is like this. 

So, like any guy would do when his girlfriend is being adorable, he pulls her back down on top of him so that they are resuming their position from earlier. “Of course, ‘ours.’ This is where we write all of our songs, where you told me about Perfect Harmony, where-”

“Where you kissed me,” Julie finishes for him. Luke’s right hand, which rests on her waist, squeezes. 

“Exactly.”

Luke falls into the dizzying memory of a late night writing with her, when they were trying to nail a line for the chorus, and he asked her to close her eyes so that he could “try something.”

“Do you trust me?”

“Of course I do.”

He doesn’t even notice that Julie has fallen quiet -- probably, hopefully, recalling the same memory -- until he runs through the whole moment in his head and returns himself back to reality to cuddle Julie closer to him, and lean down to peck the top of her head. “What’s going on in that head of yours?”

Her response is instantaneous, but her voice is distant. She’s clearly still vividly thinking about whatever it is that’s made her space out.

“Where I’m going to put the couch when I get an apartment.”

The answer makes Luke so ridiculously happy that he stays quiet for the next ten minutes, because he wouldn’t dare interrupt Julie planning a future that involves him. After that ten minutes, he realizes she’s fallen asleep -- hopefully her dreams involve him, too.


	3. 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> request: canonverse, comfort, confession, flower

So, maybe it was one of those days for Julie. 

They had become more and more few and far between since the boys came into her life, but occasionally, her brain couldn’t help it. Her mood would be soured for no reason besides the fact that she missed her mother, and sometimes it wasn’t even that -- she just wanted to cry with no purpose behind it. It was pent up emotion that needed to be let out, and anything from a sympathetic look from Flynn to Tia bringing her hot cocoa with whipped cream (Julie hates whipped cream) would set her off into a sobbing frenzy. 

The band had yet to see her like this until today. 

They could all tell that something was up since that morning -- especially Luke -- when Julie came in the garage to say goodbye before school, and could barely look any of them in the eyes. 

“Hey,” Luke pulled away a little quicker than usual, reaching up to cup her face in his hands. “You okay?”

Pathetically, she nodded. “Just tired,” her unconvincing voice reported. 

But he still saw the tears in her eyes as she grabbed her backpack and turned away. 

After that, it became his personal mission to find a way to cheer her up when she came home. He knew that she wouldn’t want him making a big deal about her mood or going out of his way to be disgustingly sweet to her. Julie Molina does not want to be coddled.

Luke can, however, make her smile. 

He toils over what he can do for her that won’t make her punch him in the face and run -- he decides, eventually, on getting her some flowers, and setting up some of her favorite music on the garage stereo, and covering the couch in blankets and pillows for her to crawl into when she gets back from school. 

(Yes, she could technically go to her bed, but if he can get her to stay in the garage then thats where he wants her.)

He even goes through the trouble of sneaking her favorite cookies from the pantry without Ray noticing the pack floating out of the house. 

Everything is pretty easy to set up except for the flowers. He wants to get her dahlias, but he wants to get her more -- like the big bouquets that have five kinds of flowers and weigh a few pounds. It isn’t until he has teleported between grocery stores and farmer’s markets that Luke realizes trying to sneakily swipe a bouquet and poof away before anyone notices will cause the kind of chaos that Julie hates. 

So he settles on finding some nice local gardens instead. 

He’s as gentle as he can be as he rips some of the foliage from the ground and different pots, finding dahlias and lilies and hydrangeas and honeysuckle and tulips. As soon as Luke returns to the Molina house, he washes them off with the hose in the back, and ties them together to make a bouquet with a stray shoelace from one of his old pairs of Vans.

Soon enough, it’s almost 3, and Julie should be home from school at any moment. 

Luke falls into a panic as he hears the car pull up -- Reggie and Alex left because they didn’t want to overwhelm her with too much attention, and Luke doesn’t know if Julie will even come by the garage if she’s been having such a bad day-

But one of the garage doors opens, and he is gripping the bouquet with an iron fist, and Julie’s hunched frame enters the space with a solemn look. 

When she notices him, and the music playing and the flowers in his hands and the comfy setup on the couch, her lip trembles. 

“He- Hey, Boss,” Luke tries to greet her, terrified that he has seriously made her day worse. “I- I- I just thought you might need to relax today, so I wanted the place to be ready by the time you got home, and t- th- th- the flowers were just something I thought you might-”

Julie bursts into tears that she seems to have been holding in all day. She’s so distraught that her backpack is still weighing down her shoulders as she lifts her hands to wipe her tears, and Luke charges towards her with the flowers in hand to slide the straps off of her shoulders and pull her into a hug. The backpack hits the floor with a thud. 

“I’m sorry,” Luke mumbles, half-heartbroken, into her hair. “I’m sorry. I just wanted to make you smile. I didn’t mean to upset you, I’m-”

_ “I’m sorry,” _ the girl in his arms sobs into his chest. Her broken voice cracks Luke’s heart and he somehow attempts to hold her closer, feeling his own tears well as she shakes against him. “I’m sorry. It isn’t you, I’ve just felt so bad all day, and I’ve been so close to crying, and now I come home and you’re trying to make me feel better and-”

Her own cries cut her off. All Luke can think to do is softly shush her and run his right hand over her hair, as if it can help. He doesn’t know what will help -- he just knows he wants her to stop crying. 

“I’m not upset that you did this, I just- When I feel like this, any little thing, good or bad, will get me to cry. You literally could have smiled at me and I might have reacted the same way. It’s just so sweet, and sometimes I love you so much it  _ hurts _ . Thank you for doing this.”

As desperately as he wants to immediately question her on the fact that she just told him she loves him so much that it hurts, he can tell now is definitely not the time to deep-dive into that. 

So he lays a kiss on the side of her head, and the soothing motions of his right hand continue. “Well, that makes two of us. I love you so much that all I thought about all day was making you happy again. I didn’t know what to do.”

Julie lets out a shaky exhale into his chest, followed by a sniffle. 

“You did everything perfectly,” she croaks as she lifts her head and slightly pulls away from him. His left arm comes in between them with the bouquet of flowers, and Julie looks down at them with a weak smile. “Where did you get these? Whose shoelace is this?”

“You have some very generous neighbors,” he vaguely explains. “And… Alex’s. So you should probably get those in a vase so I can put the shoelace back before he gets home.”

In any other situation, she would probably yell at him about the flower thing. But he only sees her smile wider as she takes them from his possession, and looks down at them like they are a precious heirloom. “Okay,” she nods, wiping her eyes. “I will.”

“And then when you get back, we can do whatever you feel like.”

Julie eyes the comfy arrangement on the couch behind him, and the pack of cookies on the coffee table.

“Like cuddle and nap and eat?”

He notices that she finally looks relieved. Not perfectly happy and sunshiney -- but like she’s getting there. To maybe even score a laugh, he darts over to the couch and leaps onto it, toppling some of the pillows. “For as long as you want, Boss! I’ll be waiting.”

After a few minutes, she’s back; speedwalking over to the couch and crawling under the blankets and into his arms like she has been programmed to do so. 

“Thank you,” she whimpers into his neck as she rests her eyes shut. The notion of being thanked is so ridiculous to him, because-- Because there’s nothing he wouldn’t do for her. 

“I’d do anything for you, Julie. You know that.”

The hum he feels against his collar bone is all that he needs to know she is finally content, after a long day of searching for peace.


	4. 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> request: canonverse, fluff, confession, fedora

Luke knew that Julie used to have a crush on Nick. He even worried once in a while that she still did -- when he heard they were dancing together, when she was helping him study for history, and when he would show up to all of their gigs with flowers. 

So yeah, maybe he was a little jealous sometimes. But then Julie would strut up to him with a microphone in her hand, and smile at Luke instead of Nick, and he would forget all about the stupid fedora-wearing blonde. 

Speaking of the fedoras -- what the fuck? Are those?

“Did you know Nick wore fedoras when you had a crush on him?” Luke asks her one day as she eats breakfast, and he is sitting on the counter next to her. 

Julie chokes on her cereal. 

“What?”

“The dumb fedoras he wears to all our shows,” he clarifies. “How could you like a guy that wears those things?” 

She brushes past him, resting her bowl in the sink with a distinct clatter that could have been avoided, but she wanted it to be loud to prove a point. “There’s nothing wrong with him dressing like a gentleman.”

“A gentleman? That’s what you call it?” 

“What would you call it?”

Julie whirls around from rinsing out the bowl only to find that Luke has approached right behind her, and has crowded her against the counter. He is definitely too close for comfort, but Julie is too high on her defensive edge to back down. Her head tilts up to face him better -- and her nose brushes against his. 

“I would call it stupid,” Luke murmurs. “Not your type.”

“And what is my type?”

She’s challenging him, and he’s up to it, but just as he is about to brush a strand of hair behind her ear and whisper against her mouth that he is her type -- or he at least should be -- Ray bursts into the kitchen. 

“Mija, are you ready to go?” 

Luke hasn’t made a move to back away, so when Ray opens the refrigerator and pokes his head inside to find a quick snack, Julie lifts herself onto her toes and presses an impulsively sweet kiss to the tip of Luke’s nose. 

The shock from her actions gets him to back away. 

“Yeah, I’m ready to go, Papa.”

And if she throws Luke a quick, flirtatious smile as she walks out of the door behind her father -- Ray doesn’t notice. 

\--

Luke plans to get his revenge when Julie gets home. They have a gig that Friday, so Luke is practicing their latest song on his six string as he waits for Julie’s arrival. Her car pulls up, and Luke hears her getting out of the car and going into the house where she will work on homework. 

Eventually, she would come into the studio and see his surprise -- which she did after about an hour. 

“Hey, are the guys around to-”

She cuts herself off when her eyes fall onto the fedora atop his head, and realizes that no one else is in the studio. 

“Luke, what are you doing?”

“Do I look more like a gentleman now? Am I more your type?”

Rolling her eyes, she stomps over to Luke and invades his personal space similar to how he had done to her that same morning. Even after a long day at school, she looks as flawless as she did when she left, and Luke forgets all about the dumb hat he’s wearing when Julie reaches up and runs her fingers along the bangs on his forehead. 

“You look ridiculous,” she deadpans, flicking her fingers up to knock the hat off of his head. “Where did you even get that thing?”

He asked Alex to talk to Willie and Willie finessed it from the HGC. 

“Just found it,” he shrugs. “But seriously, if you think I look ridiculous, why doesn’t Nick?”

“Are you really jealous that Nick looks better in a fedora than you?”

Yes. 

“No.”

Julie, still standing close to him, can practically see the lie in his eyes. “You know, you never answered my question from this morning. What is my type in your eyes? What do you think I like?”

She’s standing so close to him that her arms crossed on her chest touch his, and he’s been lying to her for the last five minutes when all he wants to do is confirm that she ~~loves~~ likes him the way he ~~loves~~ likes her. Her eyes look up at him in a strong, unwavering challenge -- and if she wants to challenge him, he will fold every single time. Because it’s her. 

“Honestly?”

“Please.”

“I’m hoping it’s me. I want to be your type.”

And just like that, her wall of defense has fallen. She makes no moves to leave his space, only flickering her eyes between his and his lips, and Luke takes her lack of disgust as a hopeful cue to lift his hand up and curl her hair around his index finger like he wanted to this morning. 

It feels like he just stepped off of a cliff and his parachute hasn’t opened -- until Julie’s arms are around his neck, and her lips are on his, and she’s kissing him like he wants to kiss her whenever she sings to him on stage. 

_“Trust me,”_ Julie gasps, breathless as she pulls away. “You are.”


	5. 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> request: canonverse, angst, confession, fight

Flynn is Julie’s best friend. She loves Flynn, so, so much -- but sometimes, she is too much of a realist for Julie to not feel like she is about to lose her mind.

It’s pretty consistent, too: “Julie, I just don’t want to see you heartbroken when he crosses over.” “He is a ghost, Julie! You two could never have a real, normal relationship.” “And what do you do when you’re aging and he’s still a seventeen year old boy? This is only going to make you unhappy in the end.”

But Luke makes her happier than she’s ever been. 

Every time her and Flynn argue about it, Julie finds herself pulling away from Luke subconsciously because every time she gets close to him, her best friend’s voice shrieks in her head to stay away. But then Luke will smile, and the echoes will end, and she will find her way back into his arms where she knows she should be. 

Only, one time, the fight gets a little more vicious than Julie ever expected. 

“Have you ever even considered if it’s worth it, Jules? Is this dumb boy really worth it? When your heart breaks over something that you both knew was coming, you aren’t allowed to come cry to me when I’ve only been trying to help this whole time.”

Julie’s never raised her voice at Flynn so loudly as she did in that moment. “If you have to ask me if he’s worth it, then you clearly don’t know him or me. He’s worth it, and he’ll be worth it tomorrow, and he’ll be worth it if I had the choice to avoid it or relive it over and over. No one is more worth it.”

And that’s how Julie finds herself in the arms of her other best friend, Luke Patterson, with tears in her eyes over the fact that she hasn’t spoken to Flynn all day. 

“I’m sorry you guys got into a fight,” Luke mumbles warmly in her ear as they sit on her bed. “Can I ask what happened?”

Julie hesitates before answering, because technically, her and Luke haven’t actually talked about their interesting little relationship or whether or not it should move any farther. She suspects that both of them want it to, but… Every doubt Flynn has ever raised to her probably isn't new to Luke either. 

But she wants him to know how she feels. How much she loves him. 

So she bites the bullet, and tightens her arms around his torso. 

“She’s worried about you and I. She doesn’t think it's smart for you and me to be together, and she thinks I’m just going to end up heartbroken, and yesterday I was just- I was just trying to tell her how you were worth all the risks.”

Luke’s hands, which had been running slowly up and down her back, still. “You’re getting in fights with your friends because of me?” “Just Flynn, she’s the only one who knows about you.”

“Well, she’s a pretty important friend.”

His tone is insistent, and almost argumentative, and dread pools in Julie’s gut like she’s about to have to defend her feelings about Luke to Luke. Worried, she lifts herself off of his body, and meets his eyes. 

“Yes, she is, but if she cares about me she’ll have to understand.” Luke looks at her, uncomfortably, like she’s crazy. “I’m sorry, have- Have I misread something? If Alex or Reggie came to you and asked you if I was worth it-” Her voice catches. The tears in her eyes should have been expected. “Would you not say yes?”

“This isn’t about whether or not it’s worth it, Julie. You’re unhappy because of me. You’re fighting with your friends because of me. I don’t know if I want to be worth it if it means you’re just going to be isolated!”

No. No, this is not what she wanted to hear. She wanted the opposite. She wanted Luke and Julie, Julie and Luke, the two of them against the world, the two of them against heaven and earth. 

“No, Luke-” He starts climbing off of her bed, and the both of them know he could just poof out, but there is a point to be made here. “Luke, please don’t go. I don’t know how you don’t understand.”

“Understand what?”

_“You make me happy!”_ It shocks the both of them how her voice raises two octaves through her now falling tears. “You could never make me unhappy, ever. You are one of the only things that makes me happy. And I don’t care if you cross over tomorrow, because I have you now, and that’s what makes me happy!”

Luke remains six feet away from her, staring at her with confliction in his eyes that she never wanted to see in a discussion about the two of them. 

“But- But if you don’t feel the same way,” she whimpers, “if you don’t want to try… Then that’s fine.”

It’s not. It’s not fine, she’ll be heartbroken, more heartbroken than if he crossed over then and there. 

But it’s looking like she doesn’t have a choice -- until Luke poofs across the six foot distance and is finally swiping his thumbs across her cheeks, looking down at her like he’s about to cry himself. 

“I want to try every day,” he hisses into the air between them. “Every time I see you, every time I look at you -- of course I want to try. But I don’t want there to be an issue if we do. I don’t want it to cause more problems.”

“It won’t,” she shakes her head in between his hands. “It won’t. Please. Please, just… Tell me it’s worth it to you.”

His forehead is soft and impossibly warm as he tilts his head down to press against hers; and she brings her hands up to wrap them around his wrists. She wants his hands to stay there, she wants to feel him, she wants him to love her.

As Luke leans in, right before he finishes the journey to her lips, he whispers it: _“It’s worth my life, Julie.”_


	6. 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> alive/canon-adjacent, fluff, early est., silver

While they’re out on a double date -- Luke, Julie, Alex, and Willie, that is -- it’s surprisingly Willie who catches the glimmer of silver on Julie’s finger as she’s stabbing at macaroni and cheese with her fork.

“Whoa, Jules, that ring is sick! Did you thrift it or something? That doesn’t look like anything I’ve seen in stores recently.”

Julie, Luke and Alex all glance down at her right middle finger -- which is, as Willie pointed out, sporting a thick band of silver that she has only recently started wearing. As Julie blushes, Alex catches Luke’s eye in a knowing look. 

The guitarist is clearly a goner. 

“Thanks, it’s actually, uh, Luke’s.”

Without saying anything else, she stuffs her mouth full of pasta and cheese and allows herself to watch the boys play a game of eye-tag. 

“Ooh,” Willie shimmies his shoulders, clearly not completely grasping the significance. “That’s pretty serious, huh?”

“You have no idea,” Alex teasingly grumbles under his breath while going in for another bite of his sandwich. When he grunts and winces, Julie knows it’s because Luke kicked him under the table. 

She just doesn’t know why. 

“I mean, yeah,” she tells Willie, curiously eyeing the unspoken conversation that Alex and Luke are having. “It’s like a promise thing I guess.”

Alex chuckles. “Oh, it’s a promise alright.”

“Dude, shut up!”

Julie and Willie, in a panic, lock eyes across the table. 

“Okay,” the singer blurts out, slamming her hands lightly on the table. The ring clinks against the hard surface. “What the hell is going on? What’s wrong with the ring?”

“Nothing is wrong with the ring,” Luke assures her. “I swear. That’s not what Alex is talking about.”

“Then what is he talking about?”

Alex and Luke are the only ones truly in-the-know at the table, and Julie feels a soft tap on the top of her foot from who she assumes is Willie. 

Luke shrugs, and shakes his head, and starts avoiding her eyes. “It- It’s just an important ring, is all. That’s all he’s talking about.”

“Jesus, Luke, you can tell her where it’s from. It won’t scare her off.” Alex rolls his eyes at Luke, and then focuses on Julie. “He’s afraid that telling you where it came from will freak you out because it’s important to him.”

At hearing that Luke is nervous about something, Julie is quick to reach her ringed hand to his left hand and grasp it reassuringly. “Luke… Whatever it is, you can tell me.”

How does he not understand that she’s all in? 

“It…” Luke starts, but as he struggles to find the words, he trails off. “It belonged to my grandpa. It was his wedding ring. He made it.”

Julie doesn’t run away screaming like he has been ridiculously worrying that she will -- instead, he sees her smile so brightly that it feels like they are performing on a stage for an adoring audience. 

She’s inexplicably overjoyed. 

“Really?” With a blush, Luke nods. Even though he has been avoiding her eyes, he doesn’t miss the way that Julie gazes down at the ring with a new love in her eyes. “Well, God, Luke. If you wanted to marry me, you should have just asked.”

Luke freezes. “Really?”

“Oh my God, we’re in high school, no!” The two of them chuckle, along with the couple sitting across the table from them. “But… Think of it as a ‘later.’”

“Later?”

Julie hums, tugging on his hand -- which is sporting it’s own ring -- to raise it to her lips. “Later.”


	7. 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> request: canonverse, pining, established, and a piece of clothing you find significant for either of them

Julie never thought that painting clothes would be a cute couples activity -- but here she was, with a pair of her own jeans, and a pair of Luke’s jeans, in front of her on a plastic-covered table. 

“Are you sure you’re okay with me painting these jeans?” Luke looks up at her, paintbrush in hand, looking down at her already partially-painted pants like he could destroy them by touching them. “I’m- I’m worried I’m gonna mess it up.”

“So what if you do? You’re trusting me to paint your jeans. I could easily mess it up.”

He shakes his head with a smile. “No, you’re Julie Molina. You don’t mess things up.”

She’s always been used to his sweet, full-faith compliments towards her that he made effortlessly -- but now that they were together, Luke almost seemed to shower her in them, like he had gone so long trying to hold himself back from saying them most of the time and now he could finally verbalize every loving thought that came to him.

With a blush, Julie mirrors his head shake.

“Well, I trust you. Do your worst. It’ll look cool no matter what.”

Julie watches as he takes his bottom lip between his teeth, and looks down at her jeans as if they are something special to him. 

(Anything she owns his special to him, but he hasn’t exactly said that out loud. He doesn’t have to.)

Taking his silence as a signal that she is good to start, Julie dips her brush into the orange paint off to her side and is drawing a line down the side of the pants before her focus is disrupted by Luke suddenly saying: “I don’t like being this far away.”

He was only on the opposite side of the dining room table, but he lifts up Julie’s jeans and walks over so that he is sitting right next to her. Once the denim is spread out in front of him, he sends Julie a content grin and leans over to kiss her on her shoulder. 

“Much better.”

Julie tries to prevent a dopey smile forming on her face -- but it’s Luke, and he’s being Luke, and she shouldn’t feel like needing to hide her happiness anymore. If anything, he wants to see it. 

For the next five to ten minutes, the two of them run their paint brushes along each other's pants in silence. Just each other’s company is comforting in itself, and eventually, Julie finds herself tilting to the side and resting her head on his shoulder. 

A kiss is pressed to the top of her head. She hums in response. 

Luke’s pants, after about twenty minutes, have cool multicolored diagonal lines criss-crossing along the sides. When she glances over at her own pants, where her boyfriend has been lazer-focused on whatever design he’s been painting, she sees an intricate purple design. 

“Does this look like a dahlia?” He asks her, out of the blue. He’s gesturing to the purple blob, and when she looks closer, she is surprised at how much it actually does look like her favorite flower -- like he’s put a lot of time in making it good. 

It’s a perfect little purple flower on her right back pocket. 

“It’s perfect,” she tells him, because it’s what she thinks. Rotating her head, she puckers her lips against the top of his bicep; lips curling into a smile against his bare skin. “I love it.”

His lips bloom into a smile, one that she doesn’t always get to see at it’s full potential: The smile that Luke gets when he is truly, genuinely proud of himself.

He’s got a good cocky smile, sure, and a confident one too, but sometimes he gets a heartbreakingly happy grin on his face like he has finally done something right and he can’t believe it. 

Julie wonders if he would smile like that more often if he knew, truly knew, how happy he made her every day. 

“Well, my pants look awesome, so thank you,” he compliments back with a low voice. “I would have loved anything you did, but that- That looks rad.”

She tries to muffle a giggle into his shoulder. “I love when you say stuff like that.”

“Like what?”

_ “That looks rad,” _ she mocks, lowering her voice to try and sound like him. When he pouts, she does the opposite and stretches her mouth into a smile; quickly pushing herself up to kiss him and get rid of his pout no matter how cute it is. 

“It’s better than ‘that slaps,’” he fires back, making himself sound like her and Flynn when they listen to a new song that they both like. “You could learn a thing or two from my slang.”

“Just for that, I’m painting ‘that slaps’ right across the butt of these jeans. You’ll get some good action with that, too.”

In retaliation, Luke leans in and buries his face into her hair, pressing rapid kisses all along her neck and cheek. “Please don’t,” he growls with a smile. “I don’t want anyone touching my ass except for you.”

Laughing at the feeling of his lips ticking her neck, Julie shrugs him off so that she can turn herself to properly, fully, kiss him. 

Against his lips, which are eagerly responding to hers, she chuckles: “Me neither.”


	8. 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> request: college au, fluff, meeting, screenplay

Julie didn’t realize that she had stayed past her reserved time. 

Not a single part of her had been keeping track -- she was much too enthralled in finishing her draft of the pilot episode of her television drama. It was a portion of one of the many portfolio pieces that she would accumulate over her time here, and she was determined to make it a strong “first episode;” seeing as how not only was the Pitch Fair coming up, but her professor also recently found an in with David E. Kelley and was teasing an opportunity at an internship. 

She was putting an inhumane amount of pressure on herself to write this, and make it beautiful. Unfortunately, it was hard for her to focus when she had two other roommates with raging social lives and coffee shops were only distracting towards her creative flow. 

That was how she found herself -- running off of three coffees and three Bangs (and a seventh concoction that was part-coffee, part-Bang, that she never wants to think about again), four hours of sleep, and pure adrenaline -- staying way past her time in the private studying room in the library. 

An insistent knock on her door is what tipped her off. 

“Hello?” There was an exasperated, deep voice on the other side of the door. “You almost done in there? Your time’s up!”

The flow of her creative juices was suddenly interrupted, and when she looked, panicked, at her computer clock, her terror was confirmed. “Shit.”

The first thing she does is rush to unlock the door, and open it up to let the other party in. She doesn’t even stop to look at them before whirling around back to her computer and bag to pack up her garbage and other belongings; wanting to rush out of there as soon as possible. 

“I am  _ so sorry, _ ” she gushes, still unaware of who was actually in the room with her. “I just had this big script to write and I am seriously out of it because I have been consuming dangerous amounts of caffeine on no sleep, so I am so sorry if you lose study time because of me-”

Zipping up her bag and slinging it clumsily over her shoulder, Julie allows herself to meet the eyes of the stranger whose education she has just hindered -- and is met with the sight of warm green. 

The stranger (the extraordinarily attractive stranger who is wearing a sleeveless shirt that shows off unfairly toned biceps), is smiling down at her with what she could only describe as concerned amusement. He doesn’t even have any kind of backpack with him, she notices; just a leather-bound journal in one hand, and a jean-chain being jingled in his other hand. 

“Actually,” he chuckles a little. God, Julie would kill to not look like the walking dead right now. The universe has decided to be so, completely unfair to her in every way. This guy is probably terrified of her. “It sounds like you need this place more than I do. You stay.”

But he doesn’t make any actual move to leave -- he just lingers on her, on her face. 

Probably on the dark circles shading under her eyes, and the oil that’s probably dotting her nose and chin. He probably thinks she’s disgusting -- but he’s doing a hell of a job hiding it. If she were an idiot, she would think he was looking at her in awe. 

The two of them just stand on each side of the desk, eyeing each other in an inexplicable way. 

(It feels magnetic. But Julie thinks she’s also just tired.)

“No, really, take the room. I am so sorry I stayed into your time.”

The hot stranger (God, why?) bites his lip with a smile, and shakes his head. “No, I mean- It’s probably more beneficial if you stay. I wasn’t going to study.”

“... Then what was your plan?”

He wiggles his hand from side to side, gesturing to the journal grasped between his fingers. Julie tries to focus her eyes on the book instead of his arms, but  _ wow, _ his arms. 

“Some writing of my own. I’m in a band, and I write all of our songs.”

Wow. Another writer. And he’s in a  _ band _ \-- and Julie looks like a fool. 

What did she do in her past life that deserved this?

“Oh, that’s really cool,” she tries to tell him, and she really means it, but she’s also kind of miserable in her current situation so it comes out a little less than enthusiastic. 

Hot Stranger takes notice. “Wow, yeah, you sound super interested.”

Julie literally buries her head in her hands, and rubs them over her face a couple times for good measure. Maybe this is a dream, and she’ll wake up with the sweet memory of caring green eyes and floppy brown hair on a guy that is too perfect for her to exist in real life. 

“I’m sorry. I’m just a little frustrated at my current situation.”

“Understandably so. Lots of caffeine, no sleep, and high expectations for yourself can do that to a person.”

“And add a cute writer guy on top of that, while I feel like shit, is a recipe for disaster.”

Yes, she just said that out loud. 

Does she even care at this point? Not really. She’ll wake up from her caffeine crash tomorrow morning and probably manage to convince herself that it was all a dream.

But right now, unfortunately, she is still in reality. “You think I’m cute?”

Writer Guy bounces on the balls of his feet, like a physical response to the compliment. She can’t help but find it endearing -- if also a little bit like a little kid who just got told that he was going to get ice cream. Her heart kicks in her chest, because she should seriously just leave before anything else dumb comes out of her mouth. 

But he’s so cute, and he’s grinning at her as if they’ve been friends for years. And the thought of leaving is unsavory. 

“That sounds like my cue to leave,” Julie responds instead, tightly gripping the strap of her bag. “Thank you for the sympathy, it was nice to meet you, and good luck with your band thing. Maybe I’ll see you around.”

“Wait!” 

He doesn’t have to tell her twice. In fact, it’s probably pathetic how quickly she comes to a stop and spins around to meet his eyes once again. 

“Really, you should stay. This room is big enough for the both of us. And if you’re writing a script, that means you’re in John Wells, and that’s-” He scratches the back of his neck. “That’s big. It’s really cool. If you don’t mind me scribbling in my songbook, then I would really like it if you would stay.”

Julie is so floored by his request, and the way he looks surprisingly nervous while making it, that she completely forgets to actually respond. He continues to fill the silent space with anxious talking.

“I- I’m Luke, by the way.” His hand is suddenly in front of her, and he is only about two feet away from her instead of eight feet, and he almost takes her breath away up close. 

She has enough brain cells in her to take it. Do the calluses on his hand almost make her audibly gasp? Yes. But the important thing is that she doesn’t. 

“I’m Julie,” she finds herself saying to him -- Luke -- with a small smile. “It’s nice to meet you.”

Luke doesn’t drop her hand. She doesn’t pull it away. “It’s nice to meet you too, Julie.”

God, Julie must be about to fall asleep standing up at any moment, because she obscenely feels like she has never heard her name sound so beautiful. It carries new meaning coming out of a literal stranger’s mouth, and it’s just like that that she realizes she should probably take her hand out of his so that it doesn’t get clammy and he isn’t immediately disgusted. 

“So… You wanna stay? We can write together?”

She’s going to need another coffee for this, but yes -- she really, really wants to stay.

And so she does. 


	9. 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> request: high school au, pining, confession, car

It was Luke’s automatic duty -- like breathing, or walking -- to drive Julie home after a gig. 

She was a new driver who was still uneasy about driving at night, and Alex would always end the night with Willie while Reggie and Flynn were always eager to delay their exit and have some more fun for a couple more hours. So when Luke got tired, and Julie and him found themselves hugging the walls of the venue or breathing heavily from a tiring set; it was customary for her to curl into the passenger seat while he pulled out of the alleyway or driveway.

It was also an excuse to spend 20 minutes alone with the beautiful girl, even if she would be half asleep sometimes when they drove home together. 

Once in awhile, she would sneak him inside and let him stay over. (But they weren’t dating or anything, obviously, because dating within the band was terrifying.)

((Only because Luke knew that Julie held his love for music in her hands. And he didn’t know what would happen if he gave her the rest of him, too.))

Tonight, they had just played a party thrown by Julie’s friend Carrie Wilson, who happened to be the cousin of their ex-rhythm guitarist -- but a gig was a gig, and a lot of their classmates were going to be there, so it was a deal they were quick to take. 

Following a six-song set and a lot of dancing, Luke felt a yawn crawling up his throat. Julie was standing off to his side, with her arm wrapped around his as if she were worried he was going to suddenly join the party and abandon her against the wall. 

But he would never. In fact, he only moved closer to her and leaned his head on top of hers that was resting against his shoulder. When she offers her bottle of water, he gladly wraps his hand around her wrist to lift the bottle to his lips and hydrate. 

“You wanna head out, Rockstar?”

Without even trying to yell over the music, she nods against his shoulder. 

Warmth filling his chest, he winds his arm around her shoulders and leads her into the entryway where the coat closet lies. Slipping on both of their coats, he is sure to wave at Reggie and Alex as he slips open the front door and holds it open for Julie; signalling their exit. 

Luke ignores the knowing grins he receives from his beloved bandmates, and slips his jean jacket over Julie’s thin sweatshirt after catching her hands rapidly rubbing up and down her arms to generate heat. 

“No, Luke, keep your jacket. It’s freezing out here.”

“I’m hot-blooded. You’re right, it’s cold, so you definitely need this.”

Pouting, she tightens the wrap of the jacket around her. “You should just let me suffer the consequences of my mistakes.”

Jumping in front of her, he opens the passenger door as if it is a ritual between the two of them. “That won’t happen if I can help it.”

Julie just rolls her eyes -- she truly, painfully, has no idea how honest he is being. 

Luke can tell she’s tired, so he does what he normally does and waits for her to start any conversation because he doesn’t want to push her. Soft music, Chasing Fire, plays through the speakers off of Julie’s playlist, and the lyrics seriously make Luke grip the steering wheel tight. 

I was driving you home in the middle of the night, but I couldn’t bring myself to say goodbye

What if he did that tonight? What if he just… Sat in the car, and told her he loved her, and waited to see how she would react?

It would be so stupid. But luckily, stupid is Luke’s middle name. 

“I love these drives,” Julie hums into the cold air, contrasting with Lauv’s voice. Her words fog up the window that she is resting her head against. “It’s so nice. Quiet, and dark, and just the two of us.”

Wow, she’s definitely exhausted. Sometimes Julie gets a little loopy and sentimental when she’s tired, but shit -- Luke’s heart pumps against his ribcage with a ferocity that can only be caused by Julie Molina. 

So, since it’s late, he’ll play her game. 

“Why do you think I always jump at the chance to drive you home?” Beat. “I just like spending time with you.”

“Really?”

God, does she really not know? Does she really not see it? 

Has he been letting her feel unloved all this time?   
  


“I thought it was obvious, Jules,” he tries to smirk but it really just is a wince. “You’re like my favorite person.”

The girl in the passenger seat stays quiet, knees tucked into her chest despite the seatbelt because the seat has practically molded to her body at this point. She belongs there, next to him. 

“You’re mine,” he hears her sigh. It’s so quiet and is almost completely muffled by the sound of a passing semi truck, but he listens and he hears it. 

It shouldn’t be what puts him over the edge. 

But it is.

“You know I love you, right?” 

Finally, her head lulls to her left so that she can face him. If he was able to look at her longer, he would see her eyes shining as if she was about to cry -- but he has to keep his eyes on the road. “I love you too, Luke. You know that.”

“No, it’s-” His knuckles bleach around the wheel. “I’m in love with you.”

Again, more silence. Luke doesn’t chance glancing at her through his peripherals because he doesn’t want to see her disgust. 

He wishes so desperately that he could be looking at her, as focused on her as he is when they are on stage or at school or not in a car where their lives are in his hands. The quiet sinks into his stomach like a lead balloon, and he has just convinced himself that he’s ruined everything as he rounds the corner into her neighborhood, when-

“You’re in love with me? Actually?”   
  


Luke scoffs. What kind of question is that? “It’s kind of hard not to be, Julie.”

The car rolls up in front of her house. He parks and turns the key in the ignition to turn it off, wondering if Julie is going to take the chance to run. 

She doesn’t. 

The second that he shifts to face her, he catches her face practically glowing -- she’s teary-eyed, but she’s smiling, and suddenly she is leaning across the center console and pressing her lips agsainst his with her soft hands on either side of his face. 

“I love you, too. But like, the way you mean it.”

It’s his turn to be shocked. “Really?”

God, her smile makes him want to kiss her senseless; but she beats him to the punch. He wants to push for more, but the chaste kiss she gives him before responding will have to do-

“It’s kind of hard not to, Patterson.”

Alex, Reggie, and probably even his parents would beg to differ. 

But none of them matter, because Julie is in front of him, and she loves him like he loves her. 

When she invites to sneak him inside as she has done many nights in the past, she holds his hand this time around -- and he eventually does get to fulfill his wish as soon as they reach her bedroom.


	10. 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> request: canonverse, fluff, established, banjo

Luke never thought he would be faced with the site of his girlfriend holding a banjo in the middle of their studio -- but here he was. Julie was perched on the coffee table with the twanging instrument in her arms, carefully plucking each string. 

“Whoa, I thought we were kidding about the country album,” Luke chuckles, clearly hesitant. It’s not that she’s playing it poorly -- it actually sounds really good for someone who hasn’t picked up a banjo before -- but he isn’t kidding when he says he thought they were kidding. 

Well, he at least hoped they were kidding. His voice was made for rasps and riffs, not twangs. 

The thought makes him shudder. 

Julie laughs at his widened eyes, but refocuses on the banjo not a second later. “Reggie was just showing me some chord progressions and stuff. Soon I’ll be able to play  _ Home Is Where My Horse Is _ .”

Oh. Gee. 

“Wow, uh,” Luke starts, “that’s neat. Cool that you’re supporting Reggie.”

Confused, Julie looks up at him, but keeps her fingers firmly in place on the banjo. “What do you mean?” 

She doesn’t look down to keep playing, so Luke takes it as a cue to approach her and sit on the coffee table to her left. To formally greet her, because she’s his girlfriend -- and God, does he love thinking that -- he grins into a kiss on her cheek and thumbs at the strings on the neck of the banjo, right over her hand. 

“I mean you’re indulging in Reggie’s fun little country thing. That’s really cool of you.”

But Luke knows he’s possibly made a misstep when Julie’s eyebrows furrow. 

“It’s a well-written song, actually. You should listen to it. Plus, the banjo is really fun! Turn around. I’ll show you what Reggie showed me.”

“Oh, Jules, no-”

But she’s already trapping him in an embrace of her arms and the instrument, and scooting towards him so that he is almost sitting between her legs with her chest pressed against his back. 

Okay. Maybe a banjo lesson wouldn’t  _ suck _ . 

Disguising his smile with a grunt, he huffs as he allows Julie to position his fingers along the banjo. It feels nice -- different from the guitar lessons he gave her a week ago -- that she is wrapped around him, resting her hands over his gently. Luke normally loves being the one holding Julie in his arms, but he decides in that moment that her arms encompassing him is not an unwelcome feeling. He feels like he’s home. 

  
  


For the next ten minutes, Luke lets Julie indulge him into a banjo lesson where they run over the same handful of chord progressions over and over. It is about a third of Luke’s usual operating speed, but their fingers keep brushing and whenever he turns his head he sees her peeking over his shoulder. 

He finds himself purposely messing things up just so that Julie will go over it again. 

And then he’s actually messing up -- because he’s been staring at Julie and grinning to himself like an idiot in favor of paying attention. 

“Luke, put your hand- Your fingers-  _ Luke, are you listening to me?” _

Blinking, he smiles at her wide eyes. “Of course, Boss. You’re just really cute when you’re teaching me the banjo.”

Not even she can argue with that. 

But when she tries to get him to play the progression just once more, he can’t help it when he slips his hands out from under hers and tilts her chin up, bringing her mouth towards his in a soft, sweet kiss. 

“What was that for?” Julie grins when they part; eyes closed as if she is anticipating more. 

“I told you.” He gives into temptation, and presses his lips against hers, not unaware of the kicking in his chest that tells him he wants to do this forever. “You just look really cute when you teach me how to play the banjo.”


	11. 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> High School au, fluff/pining, pre-relationship, hair

As much as the band made fun of him -- Luke loved Julie’s hair. So much so that he asked Flynn to teach him how to braid so that he could help Julie after gigs or during practice and she needed to tie her hair up. 

(He didn’t realize Julie loved his hair just as much, but we’ll come back to that later.)

It was idiotically indulgent, because it would be a few moments of him getting to feel her curls between his fingers and brush her scalp calmingly as if he could try and communicate through his hands that he loved her. Alex called him a simp. He wore the title with pride. 

People would look at him in the library as Julie studied and he helped her tie her hair back after watching her struggle with pushing it behind her ears for five minutes. He didn’t notice, too busy looking at her; and she didn’t notice, too busy focusing on how his hands felt as they gently weaved her hair into a braid. 

Reggie and Alex would snicker backstage as Luke would bunch Julie’s hair up, both of them layered in sweat, so that she would feel less overheated. He would gather it all together and then pull the scrunchie from her wrist and wrap it up into a ponytail; purposely trailing his fingers across her neck here and there. 

Her breath would catch every time his calluses would trace the skin there. 

They would even be in her room, watching a movie, and Luke would make small braids in her hair all around when he found that Julie would always be more interesting than whatever they were watching. 

(Even though she scowls at him for tangling up her hair; she secretly loves that he does it because he will make it up to her by tenderly unwinding each braid, leaving them cuddled close together for another 20 minutes.)

It was one of those things where they were just magnets drawing each other in with no labels around them -- no boyfriend or girlfriend, just Julie and Luke. 

And they were okay with that, for the most part. 

When Luke started wearing Julie’s scrunchies and other elastics around his wrist, she felt like it was a label in itself. He even started slightly coordinating each band with his clothing -- wearing her black elastics with his black jeans and her mustard yellow scrunchie with his  _ Rush _ tank top. She felt like that was an odd label in itself -- Luke was always there, always aware, always taking care of her. 

Neither of them knew where his fascination with her hair came from, but she didn’t hate it, and so she would make a conscious effort to not only entertain it but also reward it. 

She would always be twisting and turning her hair into different styles while still making sure there would be a few curls running wild for him to wrap around his fingers and tug on to get her attention.

Other times, when they are writing or watching another movie on their movie nights or sleeping in the back of the car during lunch, she’ll let Luke lay in her lap and scrape her nails against his scalp as she combs her fingers through her hair. 

“You have really nice hair,” she mumbles one day, and it’s the first time either of them have explicitly complimented each other out loud about the hair that they are both obsessed with. Luke rolls his head back in her lap as his legs are bent in front of him while they are perched in his backseat, and looks up at her with a halo of curls surrounding her head. 

“Says you,” he comes back with, finalizing the note with a tug on one of the freed ringlets. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but your hair is like, my favorite thing.”

Julie covers her chest in mock surprise. “What? It’s not my sparkling personality?”

She watches as he grins below her, and catches one of her hands that was once tangled in his hair in his hand. He looks uncomfortable, but holding Julie’s hand is more important. 

“Tied for first with your sparkling personality, your kindness, talent, smile, how smart you are, your wrecking ball voice-”

“Doesn’t that fit in with talent?”   
  
“-Your cool clothes, and how much love you have for your friends.”

“That basically summarizes every part of me.”   
  
“Well every part of you is amazing.”

Even though every moment between them alone is softer than the one before, Luke can’t but feel like he’s just admitted way too much about how he feels about Julie. Like, he thinks he sounds extraordinarily obsessed with her -- which he is, but shut up -- and he doesn’t want to overwhelm her. 

But instead of jumping out of the car and never speaking to him again, Julie leans down and presses a kiss to his forehead. 

“Well, your hair is probably my favorite,” she jokes with a little tug on one of his chestnut locks. “But… The rest of you is pretty okay too.”

Like an idiot, Luke grins because he knows Julie was kidding and even the smallest compliment feels like a win. Humming, he cuddles closer into her stomach. 

“Thank you.”


	12. 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i combined 2 coffee shop au requests!!!  
> First: coffee shop au, pining, meeting, mixup  
> Second: coffee shop, fluff, strangers, writing

Coffee shops where your food and drinks would be brought to you at your table were few and far between. But at  _ Rose’s _ , the mom-and-pop coffee shop tucked in a quaint brick structure, Julie found a warm home with welcoming employees. 

It even became her favorite place to write music, even if it was a little more money out of her pocket every week, and the songs weren’t going anywhere except for her dream box. 

She was in there all the time, and today was just another one of those days with her and her journal when Flynn, the waitress who Julie has become close with, drops a mug of coffee next to her. 

“Thanks Flynn,” Julie greets the girl, taking a grateful sip of the steaming liquid -- and then wincing. 

“What’s wrong?”   
  


The songwriter shakes her head. “This isn’t a vanilla cappuccino. This is just a sugarless latte.”

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry, let me-”

“Hey, did you just say sugarless latte?” Suddenly, an energetic guy with bright green eyes and expressive eyebrows is running up besides Julie’s table and casually pointing to the latte. His other hand is occupied by a filled mug whose contents are dangerously splashing around. Flynn and Julie exchange a confused look before returning their gaze to the brunette boy next to them. 

“Um… Yeah?”

“Okay, did you have a vanilla… Thing?” He gestures to the mug in his hand. 

“Yeah! A cappuccino.”

The stranger gives her an almost overwhelming grin as he focuses on her instead of the cup of coffee in front of her. His sweet smile lingers as he silently takes her in, and she can’t help but find herself smiling back at such a kind stranger. 

She wants to give him back his coffee, but if her lipstick stain is any reminder, she’s already drunk some of it. And by the way he’s guiltily looking at her cappuccino, she can tell he did too. 

It’s kind of endearing how they have an “I’m sorry I drank your coffee” conversation with their eyes, as if they are close friends who know each other like the back of their hands. 

God, this is a meet-cute if Julie’s ever seen one. 

“I’ll go get you guys new coffees,” Flynn interrupts their silent conversation, looking between them as if she’s missed something. Without another word, she retrieves both mugs and slips away, leaving Julie and the stranger awkwardly grinning at each other. 

The stranger doesn’t make a move to leave, and Julie -- in a ridiculous way -- is tempted to invite him to sit across from her and share the table. She wants to know his name, seeing as how he is painfully cute and looking at her in a way that she has never been looked at by a guy before. It doesn’t make her feel uneasy as much as it does raise hesitant excitement in her stomach.

Suddenly, their weird moment is interrupted by the incoming of two other guys around their age who almost tackle the cute stranger from behind. 

“Dude, there’s no seats left!” The raven-haired one says with a pout. 

Stranger looks disappointed. “For real?”   
  
“Yeah, man,” the blonde speaks up, “we looked all over. We just ordered, so maybe we can get our coffees to go?” Scanning the cute stranger up and down, he grows clearly confused. “Where’s your coffee? You got here like 10 minutes before we did.”

While the cute guy answers his friend’s question, gesturing to her somewhere in that response, Julie glances at the space remaining at her table. There isn’t much -- it’s a small table -- but she’ll probably be packing up soon anyways, and it’s good karma. 

She doesn’t know if she’s interrupting one of them, but she doesn’t care. “Here, you guys can take my table. I’m heading out anyways.”

But as she stands and grabs her bag, coffee guy is putting his hands up and urging her to sit back down; almost touching her shoulders. “No, please, it’s cool. We don’t need to sit down. Stay.”

“It’s really no trouble-”

“You were here first-”

“I’m almost done-”

“Seriously, it’s no big-”

_ “Oh my God!” _ His two friends exclaim. The blonde rubs his hands over his face in exhaustion. “Just accept her offer, dude. It’s a place to sit.”

“Only if she stays.”

The three of them look at him curiously, as if they didn’t hear him correctly. They couldn’t have, because it sounded like he wanted a complete stranger to stay and sit with him and his friends. 

“What?” Julie asks, because she needs to hear it again to be positive that this guy is slightly out of his mind. 

“You stay in your seat, and we’ll just pull up some chairs. Seriously, I don’t wanna interrupt your-” He gestures to the journal laying wide open on the table. 

“Writing,” Julie finishes for him. Something tells her that this was the wrong thing to say, because while the cute guy lights up, his friends take turns groaning. 

“No, I’m not doing this,” the tall blonde guy says. He tugs on the leather jacket of the guy with the darker hair. “We’re getting our drinks to go and leaving.”

Cute guy, offended, turns to his friends as they are already walking away. “Wait! Guys, what do you mean we’re leaving?”

The frustrated one points a stern finger at his friend. “I mean me and Reggie are leaving, and you can stay and flirt with coffee girl.” Realizing what he just said, he turns to Julie. “Sorry! I don’t know your name. Forgive my friend here, he’s an idiot who clearly likes you and is painfully bad at flirting. Luke, get her name and her number and find us when you’re done.”

Luke. Cute Stranger’s name is Luke. It’s fitting in a way Julie can’t explain.

She would normally nitpick at the fact that the blonde assumed that she would be comfortable having Luke hit on her and giving him her number, but then recalls that he just observed a flustered argument between them over a stupid little table in a coffee shop, and probably could tell by the way her eyes kept flickering to his bare arms that she was very much interested. 

As Luke looks after his retreating friends, Julie gestures to the chair across from her. “Since you’re here, you may as well wait for your coffee. I wouldn’t mind the company.”

“What’s your name?”

The question flies out of his mouth as he anxiously squeezes the chain on his jeans like he’s been dying to ask for a while. Julie holds out her hand. 

“I’m Julie.”

He gladly accepts the offer. “Julie,” he repeats, feeling the name on his tongue. “Julie, and you like vanilla cappuccinos, and you’re a writer.”

“Luke, and you like making your taste buds suffer, and you’re…” She rolls her lips together, trying to judge whether her assessment from earlier was correct. “... Also a writer.”

The comment was like handing him a golden ticket, because he’s all of the sudden sliding into the chair across from her, and launching into asking her about what she writes and what she does with the writing. 

They are so swept up in their animated conversation that they don’t even notice the correct coffees being slipped in front of them by a smiling Flynn. 

The two of them go through three more cups before parting -- and yes, Luke later reports to Alex, he did get Julie’s number.


	13. 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> request: always alive, first meeting, fluff, magical realism

As absolutely shitty as it was that Luke had to start at a new school, he had two saving graces: The first being the music program that he could take light advantage of without his parents knowing, and the second being that his three best friends would be there with him. 

Because they all got expelled together. 

(It was an incident involving a school assembly, a fire alarm, and skipping the rest of the day as soon as everyone was outside. It was only because the trick didn’t cause true harm to anybody that they were allowed to attend another school in the same district rather than being pawned off somewhere miles away.)

When he really thinks about it, and pushes aside the dread over joining a new student body in the middle of the year, things could probably be better here. He’ll have a musical outlet that he never had at his shitty old school, and if he can find a musical outlet, then maybe he won’t be so eager to run away all the time. 

(He was literally planning to run away from home this Friday. But only Bobby knew.)

The second he steps foot in the halls of Los Feliz High School with his best friends by his side, he can’t help but be consumed by the hope that things are going to be different. 

He can’t help it -- it’s a gut feeling that he doesn’t know the root of. 

“Boys,” he says to the bandmates at his sides, “we’ve found a new home.”

“It’s nicer than Redwood Grove,” Alex observes, scanning the unscathed lockers that line the halls and smiling faces of passing students. 

Reggie looks around curiously through the crowds, nudging Bobby at his side. “Shouldn’t we be finding an office or something?” The rhythm guitarist shrugs, and they all look to Luke -- while the lead guitarist is clueless most of the time, he ironically has the best decision making skills and can always find it in himself to be confident in his choices. 

Luke is quick to wave them down the hallway, and they walk through the space as if they already own it. It’s so relieving to not have to worry about what these people already know about him -- they don’t know anything. He’s just the mysterious new guy that everyone wants to know. 

He’s so lost in the novelty of his new school that he doesn’t realize how far he has charged ahead of his classmates -- or to notice anyone walking right in front of him.    
  
“Oh, fuck, sorry!” 

(While Luke may be cocky, he at least has manners.)

The body he ran into -- the little body -- is clad in high-waisted jeans with paint all over them, and a burgundy baseball cap covering her face. She looks up to him with frustration in her eyes, waiting to use her words to cut into whoever almost knocked her on her ass, but when they lock eyes -- the two of them freeze up. 

Luke knew that things were going to be different at this new school, and he knew in his soul that there was something big to look forward to. He just thought it would be something related to his guitar instead of… A person. 

He doesn’t know what’s even happening -- this girl just has these stunning eyes, and she’s staring at him so deeply that he wonders if she can tell he’s about to leave his family at the end of the week. A tug runs along his spine, and he knows it’s for her even though that makes no real logical sense -- he just feels it. 

_ Her. _ His soul recognizes her. He doesn’t know how. 

“Sorry,” he murmurs again, desperate to hear her speak but not knowing what else to say. He doesn’t even know what he wants her to say, but it’s not-

“Watch where you’re going, please.”

She tries walking away, and she makes it past him, but the tugging hits again and he finds himself scrambling after her. “Wait! We need your help. Please.”

The guys look at each other -- what the fuck is he doing? -- but he isn’t focused on them, he’s focused on her. She doesn’t say anything; just staring at him expectantly as she awaits his request. “We’re new, and we don’t know where the main office is. Could you point us in the right direction?”

“Keep going down the hall, take a right, second set of doors on your left.”

If Luke didn’t know any better -- he would say this girl sounded miserable. He’s almost stupid enough to ask if she’s okay, but she unknowingly saves the both of them by walking away without another word. 

“Dude, what was that?” Bobby slaps him on the shoulder. 

Luke doesn’t know. 

\--

When he gets to music class, the girl is there. She sits in the back, next to a girl in brightly colored clothing and braids, who seems to be nearly arguing with her before class starts. If the girl doesn’t notice him when he walks in, she definitely does after the teacher, Miss Harrison, announces their presence to the entire classroom. 

If her head turns up when he introduces himself, like she recognizes his voice, he tries not to get too excited. 

Any of that energy is tampered down when the girl -- Julie, as Miss Harrison calls her when it is her turn to perform -- sprints out of the classroom without playing a note or singing a word. 

Even after watching Julie’s friend follow her, the tug pulls at Luke so incessantly that he finds himself foolishly on his feet and following her path to a stairwell. When he finds them, Julie is in tears, nearly having a meltdown, as she exclaims to Flynn -- the friend -- that she “just can’t do this anymore.”

And then she realizes he’s standing there. Flynn does, too, and starts to ask him who the hell he is and why he followed them when Julie surprises all three of them by saying-

“He’s fine, Flynn. He can stay.”

It’s ridiculous how his heart bounces at hearing it; because this beautiful girl is crying and he is somehow desperate for her to stop. With a snarl, Flynn stomps around the corner and leaves Julie and Luke alone in the stairwell.    
  
“Sorry that I followed you,” he finds himself saying, “I… I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“Are you some kind of empath or have we met before and I just don’t remember?”

A little voice in Luke’s head screams both, but he couldn’t tell you why. 

He takes a few steps down the stairs, and towards Julie. “Ma- Maybe the first one? I don’t know, you just… That was rough in there. That one girl was a total bitch.”

With a sniffle, Julie cracks a small smile; turning around to take a seat on one of the steps. Luke doesn’t stop to debate whether or not it was an invitation and sits down next to her -- at a respectful distance, of course. 

“And you also just seemed like you needed a hug,” he confesses. “I don’t know. There was a lot of tension in there for some reason. Didn’t they know you didn’t want to play?”

The girl to his left folds her hands in her lap, and focuses on the intertwined fingers in favor of looking at him. He catches her eyebrows furrowing, like she hadn’t thought about it in the way that she said it before. With a choked chuckle, she runs her hands over the braid in her hair. 

“It’s a long story,” she mumbles. “I want to play, sometimes; and then sometimes I don’t. But you don’t know me. I’ve been stuck in neutral like this for a year.”

“Maybe it’s best that I don’t know you,” he shrugs, even though that little annoying voice in his head tells him that he does know her. “Or, I mean, that I didn’t know you. I don’t have any expectations of you. You just weren’t ready. Whatever happened, you shouldn’t be penalized for that.”

When her face crinkles together and the tears that were building up in her eyes start falling onto her skin and the denim of her jeans, Luke is torn between panic that he upset her and the urge to hug her and the desperation for a sign of what to do next because this girl that he is ridiculously attached to his sobbing right next to him. 

He settles for covering one of her hands with his. A few tears fall onto it, but he doesn’t care, even when she swipes her left hand over his top get the tears off. 

Within the same breath, she apologizes, tells him that her mom died last year, and that no one had been so forgiving of her unwillingness to play in a long time. 

Luke doesn’t run away that Friday. 

But that same Friday, Julie finds her voice again.


	14. 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> combined request:   
> 1: high school au, luke pining for julie, friendship on the cusp of something more, dahlias  
> 2: high school au, fluff, confession, the chain on luke’s jeans

Luke would buy Julie flowers for a wide variety of reasons. 

Their friends thought it was almost ridiculous how often Luke would show up at school or band practice or even Julie’s house with a bouquet of dahlias with some reason behind it that wasn’t the fact that he was in love with her and giving her flowers was his romantic love language. 

(Yes, we all know his primary love language is touch, but he will hug a stranger he met on the street, so it carries significantly less weight.)

He knows that dahlias are her favorite flower, and he knows how important it is that there are always dahlias in the house to keep the spirit of her mom around in a symbolic way. Wherever there are dahlias, there is Rose -- and Luke understood that almost better than any of their friends. 

Which is why he would come up with excuses to give Julie flowers all of the time. 

The night of a show? _Flowers_. Her birthday? _Flowers_. A good grade on a test, she’s having a bad week, or just him noticing that the current bouquet is dying? _Flowers_.

You get the picture.

On the anniversary of her mom’s passing, the dark date falls on a school day. Julie doesn’t show, which is expected from their friend group -- and when she ignores text messages, they all assume she’s taking the day to herself. 

In hopes of making her smile, Luke drops by the store on the way back from school and picks up a bouquet to bring by the Molina household before heading home. 

(Or sticking around to hang out with Julie. He would painfully prefer the second option, but also is well aware that this is a day that she needs to be alone.)

Ray Molina wears a grim smile when he sees Luke on the other side of the threshold. 

“You’re sweet, mijo. I would let you go say hi, but she woke up sick, and she could barely stand. We were going to go visit her mom today, but we want to make sure she’s there so we are postponing it for a few days. She’s pretty upset.”

Hearing that she’s sick, and likely very depressed, only makes Luke more tempted to respectfully push past her father and run up to her room to comfort her. 

“Oh,” he says instead, shoulders slumping. He holds out the bouquet of dahlias. “Okay, well, can you give these to her for me? I’m sure she’s been having a rough day, and-”

A handful of distinct thumps cut him off, and both him and Ray turn to look at the source of the sound: The staircase, where Julie is stumbling step by step, wrapped up in a blanket. 

“Julie!” 

Without hesitation, Luke crosses the threshold and darts into the house to check on Julie, alongside Ray. She’s hardly standing, and her eyes are almost fully shut as she clutches the blanket and murmurs to herself in Spanish. 

“Papa, estoy lista,” she hums into the air as they grip her arms and try to get her to sit down. “¿Por que Luke está aqui? No quiero le verme así este.” 

Luckily, Luke’s known her long enough to be able to make out what she’s saying, and finds himself running his hand over her forehead -- God, she’s burning up -- and over her hair. 

“Traje unas flores para ti. Sentarte, por favor, y no preocuparte por tu apariencia. Eres siempre hermosa.”

His Spanish is definitely average, but he knows enough to talk her down to the floor and get her resting against him as Ray looks between them with wide eyes. Luke feels himself blushing and his skin is so warm that he wonders if it could pass for a fever of his own. While her dad clearly wants to have a conversation later that Luke had been dreading -- even though they were literally friends -- there is more focus on getting Julie back up to her room. 

“I’ll carry her back up,” Ray decides, grunting as he stands. He leans back down to tap on his daughter’s shoulders and coax her off of Luke, but she only presses farther into the boy; clutching onto his arm for dear life. Both Luke and Ray know that this means. 

“I’ll get her upstairs.” Ray nods at Luke, staring down at his daughter in the guitarist’s arms, wondering how the two of them happened right before his eyes and how Luke could never conceive how Julie adores him.

“Gracias, mijo.”

Julie is already close to his side, so all it takes is a strategic shift for him to be able to slip his right arm under her legs and tighten his arm around her back. “Okay, mi mariposita enferma, let’s get you back to bed.”

“Quiero ver a mi mamá,” she mumbles lucidly into his neck. Luke feels his heart throb under his ribs, because he knows how hard this is for her, and he just wants to make everything better for her even though no one has that kind of power. 

(Except for Julie herself. She can always make everything better for him.)

“Yo se,” he whispers back, almost at the top of the stairs. “Te traería si yo pudiera te traer.”

She doesn’t say any more, but she presses herself even closer and he worries that she may be on the verge of tears. Refusing to look down at her for fear his heart will shatter, he gently slips through her bedroom door and lays her on the mattress; pulling the covers back over her in an instant because she started shivering the second he put her down. 

She murmurs “quiero mi mama” a handful of times, and Ray brings up a cup of steaming tea, and Luke finds himself sitting on the edge of her bed trying to get her to drink some of it. 

Eventually, she gives in, grumbling more Spanish that was so quick and quiet and run together that Luke couldn’t even attempt to decipher it. 

“You should probably go home, mijo,” Ray says after a few moments. “Go take a shower and pop some Vitamin C. I didn’t mean to put you at risk.”

“No, Sir, it’s okay. I needed to make sure Julie was alright.” Gazing down at the half-asleep girl who is curled in bed with a mountain of blankets and a teddy bear pressed into her chest, Luke remembers the bouquet downstairs. “Do you mind if I put the flowers in a vase before I go?”

Who would Ray be to deny him that?

With a head nod towards the door, he gives the teenager a small grin. “Go for it, mijo. You know where the vases are by now.”

He does. And he makes quick work of a nice light pink one, tucking the bundle inside after filling it with water. After scribbling down a note on a nearby piece of paper, he is skipping every other step as he rushes up the stairs. He finds Ray hovering by the doorway, keeping watch over Julie.

The vase is positioned on her nightstand, with the note tucked under the base. Luke tries to stay as quiet as possible, because he doesn’t know if she’s asleep or awake when-

There’s an insistent pull against the chain on his jeans. 

Julie has reached out from under the covers and hooked two fingers around it to keep him close. Without opening her eyes, a small smile forms on her face: “Gracias para las flores.” And if Luke listens even closer: _“Te amo.”_

Julie’s dad is six feet away, but Luke forgets all about that when he unlatches her hand from the chain and presses her palm against his lips. 

“Cualquier cosa para ti, mariposa.” Quietly, murmured against her palm like a promise, _“te amo.”_

Her grin impossibly widens, which is the most emotion she’s shown the whole time he’s been there. It makes his chest ache a little that he managed to make her smile, even a little bit, even in this state. 

He would do just about anything to keep her smiling. 

\--

The next morning is a Saturday, so he sleeps in, and plans to go over to see Julie again. He doesn’t have to wonder long if she’s still in the same state, because he wakes up to a text from her on his phone:

_Dad says you were killing the Spanish game yesterday. Bravo._

_And BTW, thank you for the flowers. They’re beautiful._

And once again, Julie is the one making him smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> translations bc apparently my four years of Spanish have not gone to waste:
> 
> \- Papa, estoy lista. ¿Por que Luke está aqui? No quiero le verme así este = Dad, I’m ready. Why is Luke here? I don’t want him to see me like this.
> 
> \- Traje unas flores para ti. Sentarte, por favor, y no preocuparte por tu apariencia. Eres siempre hermosa. = I brought flowers for you, Sit down, please, and don’t worry about your appearance. You’re always beautiful.
> 
> \- mi mariposita enferma = my little sick butterfly
> 
> \- quiero ver a mi mama = i want to see my mom
> 
> \- yo se, te traería si yo pudiera te traer = I know, I would bring you if I could bring you
> 
> \- gracias para las flores, te amo = thank you for the flowers, I love you.
> 
> \- cualquier cosa para ti, mariposa. te amo = anything for you, butterfly. i love you.


	15. 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> combo request!  
> 1: canonverse, mutual pining, confession perfect harmony  
> 2: canonverse, mutual pining, confession, guitar

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: i make a consistent analogy about *blood* in this so if that is triggering to anyone then proceed with caution!!!

When Julie got home from school on a fateful Friday afternoon, she ran to the garage that has once again become her second home with the hope that the boys would be there. 

(Well, specifically, Luke. But she loves them all.)

What she doesn’t expect to walk in on a nearly empty garage, except for the ghost who owns her heart, who has a guitar in his hands and is strumming away at a familiar song. A song that he didn’t know -- or at least, definitely shouldn’t know -- and humming along to the exact melody of the words. 

He was playing the love song that she wrote for him to try and catch all of the love she had for him so that it didn’t accidentally overflow and come out at inopportune moments. Writing the song was almost a little like blood-letting; she did it to try and get all of the love out. 

But just like how blood-letting wasn’t a medically effective method to treat sickness, writing Perfect Harmony did not dispel the butterflies in her stomach when Luke smiled a smile that was just for her, or the ache in her heart whenever he looked at her like he had struck gold. She was stuck loving a ghost. It didn’t help that this same ghost was able to hug her and hold her hand all of the time, either.

Now, those callused hands were plucking out the notes that she had written herself, and his head was bopping along with the beat, and it sounds almost exactly how she had imagined it but that was all it was ever supposed to be: Something she imagined. 

Her blood was spilled on those pages; each drop of crimson laced with an overdose of affection. 

And it was all bare to him now. 

“Why are you playing that?”   
  


Her voice is shakier than she has ever heard it before. Luke looks up from the paper that had the notes he was following, smiling wide -- but his lips curl down when he sees the mortified look on her face.

“You left it out in your room, and I went in there to find where I left my beanie the other night, and…” He trails off, moving the guitar from his lap to approach her. “Did I do something wrong?”

In any other case, yes. But she was just stupid. Luke is allowed to go into her room if he ever needs to, it’s more the snooping that she has a problem with -- but he wasn’t even snooping. It was out in the open. 

She didn’t bandage her arm properly, and the blood continued to spill. 

“No,” she croaks, looking intently at one of the plants back behind the grand piano. “No, I- I did.”

And then she spins around, because oh my God he found the song and oh my God does he know it’s for him, but the second she steps out of the garage, he’s poofing in front of her. She ends up running right into his chest, when he rests his hands on her upper arms to keep her in place. 

“Jules, what’s up? Is something wrong with the song? I just saw it, and it was really good, and I thought we could practice it when you got home-”

“It was really good? That’s all you think?”   
  


It feels like the wound has been ripped open. The song didn’t work, so she has to get out more -- and Luke is right here, and she’s shocked, so it looks like the blood will continue to spill onto him. 

_Can’t he see that she’s been bleeding for weeks?_ She’s tired. She wants him to stop the bleeding. 

His thumbs trace soft circles against her shoulders as his eyebrows furrow together at seeing her anguish. “Well, I mean- It’s amazing, Julie. Everything you do is. Whoever you wrote it for is going to really love it.”

The blood is on his hands and he can’t see it. 

_ God, she’s so tired. _

“Do you?” She asks, heart racing in her chest trying to pump all of the blood out of her body and get her to stop feeling like this. His hands grasp around her arms tighter, like he’s shocked and is desperately hoping she’s saying what he wants her to be saying. “Do you really love it?”

Finally, he sees it. The crimson. The love dripping from Julie’s wounds, his name embedded in the DNA. His hands slide up her arms and to her neck, allowing his thumbs to resume their tracing along her cheeks and jaw. 

“Do I love it?” He repeats, extra emphasis on the eye. Between his hands, Julie nods. Magnetically, he leans into her farther. “I do. I really love it.”

There’s a double meaning in there too -- Julie catches the small scratch on his arm opening up for her. 

“You wanna come play it with me? I wanna show you how I was thinking of playing it on the guitar.”

The guitar. The beautiful guitar that played him in during her fantasy, and now she gets to hear it for herself, straight from his fingers. She wants nothing more.

And she tells him as much. 

For the next hour, she sits in his arms, with his guitar being shared in her lap. His hands overlap hers and their arms are entangled, and eventually, they are distracted from the guitar and more focused on tracing the scars that they had inflicted for one another. 

As his index finger runs up the inside of her forearm, right along her veins, she can feel her cut sealing together, and the bleeding has finally stopped. She doesn’t need to dispose of her love for him anymore -- not now that he’s wrapping her up in him, determined to show her all of the love from him she’s been missing.


	16. 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> request: famous au, fluff, meeting, autograph

Luke Patterson was excited to be at the Grammys for many, many reasons -- but only part of it (a big part) was because Sunset Curve was nominated.

Best Rock Album, Record of the Year, and Best Rock Performance were their three nominations for their third album,  _ Demo Tapes _ , and specifically their singles  _ Now Or Never  _ (rock performance) and  _ Unsaid Emily _ (record of the year). It was all that the boys had been working towards, seeing as this was their first time around after a near revolt towards the academy last year for snubbing their sophomore, self-titled album. The four of them were beaming with excitement in their custom suits -- God, _ custom _ , as uppity as it was, Luke couldn’t deny he looked hot. 

However, besides the fact that the four boys were rocking their suits and were going to be honored to perform Now Or Never on the same stage that their inspirations had done decades before -- Luke couldn’t help the bubbling in his stomach that he might run into Julie Molina on the red carpet. 

Yes,  _ the _ Julie Molina. 

After revealing during a round of  _ Spill Your Guts or Fill Your Guts _ on the Late-Late Show that Julie was Luke’s raging celebrity crush, and she exposed the same truth about him while playing  _ Plead The Fifth _ on Watch What Happens Live, Luke had been itching to meet her in person. 

Both of them seemed to be on the other sides of the country -- hell, even the world -- at different times, from running the talk show circuit to world touring. He knew they were both from LA, but it never felt like they were home at the same time. 

Tonight, she was nominated for Best Pop Vocal Album, Best Pop Vocal Performance, and yes; Record of the Year, too. And this was only for her sophomore album,  _ Wake Up _ , and her leading single of the same name. The single had debuted at #1 on the charts and knocked  _ Now Or Never _ to #3 (it was competing with  _ All Eyes On Me _ , by Dirty Candi), while the album had been switching with  _ Demo Tapes _ on the charts for the last month. 

He was honestly hoping that they would get the chance to communicate, or even collab, at some point -- as many avid fans online were urging -- because he was pretty sure she was one of the most talented songwriters in the next generation of the music industry.

He thought they could make each other even better. 

His plan was honestly to try and track her down on the red carpet, and if that didn’t work, he would find her in the auditorium. She would probably be in the front row next to Adele or Beyonce anyways, seeing as how she was (as deserved) America’s Darling. 

“Dude,” Alex elbows him in the gut and gestures to the line of paparazzi and reporters with flashing cameras in microphones. “Stop staring into space and smile. And walk us on,  _ lead guitarist _ .”

The nickname is said with spite and a smirk, but Luke is overall grateful that Alex centered him in the moment once again and got him to quit looking for Julie. 

She probably wasn’t even there yet, so he shouldn’t worry about it. 

(Even though he’s definitely been fantasizing about how stunning she’ll look tonight.)

Him and the boys walk up to a few reporters to hyperactively answer a few questions while finding time in between to pause for photos of all of them together, and some individual shots. They are in the middle of being ushered down the red carpet when he hears it:

“Julie! Julie Molina! Come here darling, I would love to talk to you!”

There are a few people in between them, but she’s there -- in a stunning, bright purple dress covered in sparkles and small diamonds. Her curls are flawlessly pulled back but still twirling down behind her head, and to be blunt -- she takes his breath away, even though he can’t see her clearly. 

“Luke! Luke!” A photographer is calling out to him, so he is sure to face back and sling his left arm around Reggie as the band poses for a few more group shots. Once again, a technician is guiding them to walk right to proceed along the carpet, and Luke catches that Julie is still being interviewed. 

He doesn’t realize he’s staring when a reporter, the same reporter that’s interviewing Julie, is calling him over. 

And Julie is still standing there, visibly blushing under layers of makeup and sending him a sheepish, apologetic smile. 

Without hesitation, he jogs over, and hugs the reporter. 

“Hi, Grace! It’s good to see you!”

“Luke Patterson, you are the talk of the night -- besides my other guest, Miss Julie Molina, of course.” Grace gestures to both of them, and Luke sees that Julie is still avoiding her eyes, and even though they are currently broadcast on national television he just wants to talk to her. 

“Yes, of course, I’ve been looking forward to getting to officially meet her all night.”

Julie’s head whips to the left to look at him -- he meets her eyes with his classic, joyous Luke Patterson grin. When she reflects it, he feels like the final nail has been hammered into his coffin. 

“No, you have not!” She slaps his arm playfully. “I should have known you’d be a flirt when I met you.”

“So what you’re saying is… You’ve thought about meeting me too?”

Their moment is interrupted by the reporter. “Wait, you two haven’t met before? That’s impossible!”   
  


“And incredibly disappointing,” Luke jumps in. “All of our fans keep asking us to meet but we’ve been touring at the same times, and the timing’s just never been right.”

“I just told Marie Claire last week that Lu-  _ Sunset Curve _ , sorry, was my dream collab for the future. Our sounds could blend so well!”   
  


Luke’s heart just about shoots out of his chest, so he tries to control himself by biting his lip with a smile. The reporter doesn’t miss it. “Luke, you look happy about that!”   
  


“I- I-” His stutter emerges, but he quickly swallows and changes directions. “It’s just really cool to hear that, we listen to Julie’s music all the time at home, and I have spent an unhealthy amount of time imagining a collaboration, so hearing she feels the same way tells me already that we would creatively blend really well.”

At his side, Julie beams at him. His cheeks hurt from smiling so much, and she’s giggling at his sweet words, and in the split moment that the reporter tries to regain their focus -- their hands brush together as they spin back to face Grace. 

In a bold move, Luke raises his fingers towards hers like they are magnets, and holds his breath while he waits for a reaction. 

He can finally breathe when her fingers link in his; her soft skin brushing along and sending sparks up his arm. 

“Well, I should let you guys go,” Grace says with a sigh, “but thank you both so much for taking the time! Can we expect a possible Julie Molina/Sunset Curve collab anytime soon?”   
  


Surprisingly, Julie takes the lead on this one, her fingers tightening around his hand. 

“If it’s not the next song that I release, then somethings wrong and you guys will need to send help.”

You have a band, Luke tells himself, a band that you need to talk to about-

“I second that,” he finds himself saying with a squeeze to Julie’s hand. 

As the reporter hypes up their announcement while facing the camera, they start to walk away, and Luke realizes he has to rejoin the band on the carpet and not get to stand here and hold Julie’s hand and tell every reporter that he is holding Julie Molina’s hand! 

Julie turns to him. “See you in there?”

“See you in there,” Luke smirks, “I’ll be the one on my feet when you sing.”

“And I’ll be the one holding the Grammy.”

And with a wink, as Luke shakes his head with an awed grin, she makes her way back to the carpet.

\--

As it turns out, they do find each other later. Shockingly, Julie asks the band for an autograph, because -- despite Luke’s teasing -- her little brother is apparently a huge fan.

She is the victor in the competition for Record of the Year, but Sunset Curve pulls away with two trophies from their other nominations, and Luke can’t find it in him to be anything but overjoyed for themselves and Julie -- especially as he watches her sing, captivate the entire audience, and get everyone on their feet at the end. 

In a burst of impulsiveness, she joins them in their van after the ceremony; but instead of going to an afterparty, they drive to the boys’ house on the beach and Luke finds himself curled up on the couch in his custom suit right next to Julie (who is almost on top of him), furiously writing down new songs and beginning their collaboration then and there. 

It turns out, they were wrong about one thing. 

The next song released by the two artists isn’t the collab -- the next _album_ is. _Julie and the Phantoms_ becomes their official collaboration project, and spirals into more of a hit than their individual groups. 

Twelve months later, they are back at the Grammys, and everything is the same -- only they are no longer competing. They are a team. And Luke couldn’t be happier about it; especially when he shows up on Julie’s arm.


End file.
